Specialized electrical connectors are used to connect different electrical components in order to allow electrical signal transmission between these components. It is known that cross talk between contacts of such an electrical connector influences the signal integrity of the signals transmitted by these electrical connectors.
Several approaches are known in the art for reducing the amount of cross talk between differential signaling contacts in the electrical connectors and, thus, to improve the signal integrity of these connectors.
In some differential signal connectors, a configuration of shielding plates and ground contacts is used to minimize cross talk between contacts of the connector. However, this approach results in connectors with lots of components and, consequently, expensive and heavy connectors.
In other differential signal connectors, shielding plates have been omitted. In these connectors, pairs of differential signal contacts are arranged in a staggered fashion in slots of a regular matrix and ground contacts are arranged between the staggered pairs of differential signal contacts in order to minimize cross talk between the differential signal contacts.
In still other differential signal connectors, an approach is taken wherein the housing of the electrical connector is modified in order to provide an irregular matrix of staggered slots. The differential signal contacts are received in the staggered slots. The thus achieved staggering of the differential signal contacts reduces the amount of cross talk between these differential signal contacts of the electrical connector.